Returned Refugees Say Cuba, Defying Pact, Retaliates

By LARRY ROHTER

Published: March 10, 1996

CAMAGUEY, Cuba, March 4—
One day after Washington and Havana agreed last May that "boat people" fleeing Cuba would no longer be guaranteed political asylum in the United States, 13 men were picked up aboard two rafts adrift in the Caribbean. Assured by the American and Cuban Governments that there would be no retribution against them, they were forcibly returned to their homes here.

Ten months later, however, members of the group, the first to be handed over to the Cuban authorities under the agreement, contend that neither Government has lived up to its obligations. The Cuban Government, they complain, has from the day of their return carried out a campaign of reprisals, intimidation and harassment against them, while the United States has failed to prevent continued violations of the immigration accord the two nations had signed.

In six hours of interviews in this industrial city 350 miles southeast of Havana, the returnees said they and several of their relatives had been systematically threatened by State Security agents, arrested on trumped-up charges or accused of working for the C.I.A. All but two are now without jobs because of their political status, they said, and the pair still employed are regularly harassed by co-workers, bosses or State Security officials.

"For the two Governments, this agreement has been marvelous," said Ulises Cabale, 29, an electrician who has been assigned to a temporary work-training program to repair electrical meters. "But for us, it has been a disaster that leaves us in a worse position than ever."

It was not possible to corroborate independently all the accusations the returnees made. But they offered specific details about actions taken against them, including dates and the names and ranks of the security officials said to be involved.

All those interviewed said they were interested in making their situation known because they still wished to leave Cuba and hope eventually to be admitted to the United States.

Under the May agreement, the Cuban Government promised to "insure that no action is taken against those migrants returned to Cuba as a consequence of their attempt to emigrate illegally." In return, the United States ended its 30-year policy of treating virtually all Cubans who reached American shores as political refugees, and was authorized to send diplomats from the American Interests Section, its quasi-embassy in Havana, to interview returning raft refugees to insure that the accord was being properly carried out.

'Illegal Departure' Is Still a Crime

But the agreement does not "preclude the obligation of the Cuban authorities or society to act against such a person for other reasons or crimes committed before or after the attempt" to leave Cuba, Ricardo Alarcon, the Cuban official who negotiated the accord, noted a week after it was announced. Nor did Cuba revoke an "illegal departure" statute on its books, which the rafters here said has recently been used to detain and question several of them.

The returnees said they had repeatedly told the American diplomats who are monitoring the accord of those and other reprisals being taken against them. But American officials have simply brushed aside their complaints, they said, and urged them to apply to a program that selects 20,000 Cubans each year for entry to the United States.

"Every time the people from the American Interests Section come, they tell us we do not meet the requirements to be political refugees," said Felix Ivan Rodriguez, a 29-year-old cook. "They tell us we have no priority, that our best chance is to try our luck in the lottery, like everyone else."

Human rights groups suggest that it is no accident that American officials are reluctant to pursue claims that the accord is being violated. Despite a recent heightening of tensions between Washington and Havana, they say, the Clinton Administration has a vested interest in preventing another flood of Cuban refugees toward Florida.

"There is a conspiracy of self-interest and silence going on between two contending parties, the United States and Cuba, that victimizes these innocent asylum seekers," said Arthur Helton, director of the Forced Migration Projects of the Open Society Institute, a New York-based human rights group. "The last thing either Government wants to do is raise the question of the viability of the migration accords."

Officials at the American Interests Section in Havana declined to discuss how the immigration accord is carried out, referring all questions to the State Department in Washington. [A spokesman there said on Friday that the returnees appeared to be subject to the same type of surveillance and ostracism as any other disaffected Cuban, but that there was "no proof they are being persecuted" as a direct result of their effort to leave Cuba.]

In a letter to the Open Society Institute last month, Peter Tarnoff, the State Department official who negotiated the agreement, said the United States was "generally satisfied that the Cuban Government has fulfilled its commitment." While there have been "individual instances of concern," he added, "we have engaged the Cuban Government vigorously on each of these."

For its part, the Cuban Government has consistently rejected any suggestion that it has taken reprisals against returnees.